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Sunday, November 15, 2015

I Don't Know

I have no idea how to respond to tragedies like we woke up to yesterday other than a deep sickness in my stomach. In January, Boko Haram opened fire on Northern Nigerian villages killing an unknown number of people (estimates range between 100 and 2000). Suicide bombings in Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and the Philippines killed more than 200 people. In February, more than 90 people were killed in the Cameroon in a burning/shooting incident, again at the hands of Boko Haram, who were responsible for another incident costing 58 lives in March. That month, the Islamic State ended another 137 lives in a mosque in Yemen. April started with the death of more than 147 people in a university in Garissa, Kenya. I am not going to carry on.... Here is a list of terror incidents in 2015.

These incidents seem to bolster whatever someone's opinion was before. Same but stronger. Those in favour of understanding perpetrators will feel we need to work harder to find out why people would do this. Those in favour of force, will feel this is the final justification needed for a full declaration of War. I take some solace in the fact that the reason they are terrorists is because they are losing, but that is small solace. We can do things differently. Perhaps the answer is to do the opposite of what you think? Find out more about the opinions that you are being pushed away from. Don't empower terror by letting it work.

I would like to live in a world where deadly force is never acceptable. Where there is no escape clause for morality. There is no but. No God wills it. No but they did this. Never. The short answer to the question of how we get there is I don't know.

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Swart Donkey

Swart means Black (my surname) in Afrikaans. I am proud of my African roots but am a global citizen who believes that we should look to define ourselves collectively by the great things we can achieve. I believe in freedom of people and ideas and that we are moving towards a more friendly, happy world. Like a Donkey, I can be noisy, stubborn and ignorant - but like a Donkey I am willing to put effort in to change. The focus of this blog is happiness and learning - so basically, it is a blog on everything.